2012 Porsche 911: The Chase

[John C. Chu]

Nice getting a quick glimpse on how they rigged the car to follow a Porsche around a track.
[DSLRs of course]

Yes, this would be my fantasy job but I'm not sure I want to risk my Canon like this.

The Chase - YouTube

[Garrett Low]

My dream job would be one of the drivers. And forget about my camera, those guys are throwing $150K worth of cars around the track.

-Garrett

[Chris Medico]

With the budget those shoots have, throwing away a few cameras if they get crunched means NOTHING to them.

The track rental alone at Laguna is more than $20k/day. I bet the budget for that shoot was north $50k/day.

And yea, it is as much fun to do as you think it would be.

[Garrett Low]

Chris, you're definitely right about the budgets for car commercials. I'm in the pre-production stage of doing a spec commercial for a car and it's amazing how much is done for that one perfect shot. On average the auto industry spends more money on their commercials than any other industry. Track time is less than shutting down a couple of city blocks for a day though. My DP for the commercial has worked on other full paid production car commercials and he's sat out in the desert for entire days waiting for the right 5 minute window to get the beauty shot. An entire production crew sitting out there for what ends up being 10 seconds in the commercial.

I use to race a Porsche in my younger days and I never got to drive Laguna but I did get a couple of laps as a passenger. That is one track that scares the heck out of me. Fun but it can be a bit of a nail biter. This shoot looked like it would have been a blast to work on. Would love to get back into racing but that is one activity that eats way more money than even video does.

[Chris Medico]

You are absolutely right about racing eating $$ Garrett. I've been racing and doing track instruction for the last 25 years. We had our first race of the season 2 weeks ago at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw SC. Luckily we didn't blow anything up or break anything so its going to be rather painless to be ready for the next race in July.

I've not driven Laguna peronally. I can only imagine what dropping into the corkscrew is like in person since it looks terrifying on video.

The furthest west track I've had the pleasure of doing has been Miller Motorsports Park in Utah. I have done most of the major road course tracks east of the Mississippi though.

Being a driver has me helped a lot when working on a car shoot. Knowing that is easy for a driver and car to do helps to not waste time asking for something not realistic.